Feminist: Transgender Push ‘Is Harmful To Women’

8:36 PM 06/23/2016 | US

Peter Hasson | Reporter

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In an article published Wednesday afternoon, prominent feminist Kathleen Sloan argued that the transgender movement is harmful to women, threatens their safety and erases the historical oppression they have suffered at the hands of men.

Sloan, a former board member of the pro-choice National Organization for Women (NOW), wrote an article for Delaware news site The News Journal arguing a bill under consideration by the state Senate that would add an “equal protection” amendment to the state Constitution that would designate “gender identity” as a constitutionally protected class.

“To women’s rights advocates and feminist leaders like me, laws that include gender identity raise a number of red flags for their unintended consequences for women,” Sloan wrote. “The politics of the gender identity movement that is sweeping the country is bringing with it a multitude of problems for women and girls. One of the issues is the loss of safe sex-segregated spaces such as public bathrooms, changing rooms and even domestic violence shelters,” she went on to say.

“When access to such public spaces is based only on a subjective belief that one is a woman, this effectively allows men to claim a gender identity and enter women’s spaces at any time. This is a problem for females because our biology makes us physically vulnerable to men,” Sloan said.

“The fact that men are generally physically stronger and larger than women, have more upper-body strength and cannot become pregnant, makes women physically vulnerable to men. We are also socially vulnerable due to ubiquitous physical and sexual violence against women based on our biological sex. Why is it only women who must be afraid to walk alone outside at night?”

But physical safety isn’t even the most significant problem the transgender movement presents for women, Sloan said.

“The other much more significant problem for women is that it becomes impossible to name biological sex as the source of women’s oppression, subjugation and inequality in a patriarchal world.”

Thus, Sloan argued, the greater threat to women posed by the transgender movement “is that ‘gender’ is detached from the biological differences between males and females (present in all mammalian species) and consequently male supremacy and the oppression of women is obscured and ultimately erased.”

Senate Bill 190 would add an “equal protection” amendment to the state’s constitution that states: “Equal protection under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of race, sex, age, religion, creed, color, familial status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”

In order for the amendment to be ratified, two-thirds of both houses would have to vote in favor of it.

According to Ballotpedia, Democrats hold 25 of the 41 seats in the Delaware House of Representatives and 12 of the 21 seats in the State Senate. In order for the amendment to pass, all of the state’s Democrats and a handful of Republicans in each house would have to vote in favor of it.